


a quarter moon of light

by irnan



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-29
Updated: 2011-12-29
Packaged: 2017-10-28 11:16:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,847
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/307310
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/irnan/pseuds/irnan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jim remembers the day the dreams started: 30th June 1997.</p>
            </blockquote>





	a quarter moon of light

**Author's Note:**

> So you know when you're about fourteen and Sirius Black has just died and Dumbledore's finally upped and told Harry the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth and every word of OOTP makes you cry because: Sirius is dead and he hated that house and shouldn't have had to live there and basically went from one prison to another and Dumbledore just doesn't get it and maybe never will and OH GOD HARRY and everything in the world that can hurt does hurt -
> 
> anyway you're in that state of mind and keep making up WHAT IF MAKING IT ALL BETTER scenarios in your head and one of your favourites is the one where Lily and James come back from the dead and sort of march up to Privet Drive and when Petunia opens the door Lily is like HELLO PETUNIA REMEMBER ME? and either Petunia faints dead away on the doorstep or Lily punches her lights out -
> 
> \- I could never decide which of those two options I liked better -
> 
> this is that fic.

**Monday**

“It’s not the first time!” Joanie says, and while she’s far from being panicked, she’s none too calm either. “Dad, it really isn’t. I saw the way the ball flew and no ball flies like that, Dad, it took a sodding _corner_ and went right in the net!”

“Joanie,” Jim says, flicking his hand through his hair and getting a better grip on his mobile, “love, you’ve just said you were fouled, that your knee was hurting –“

His daughter draws a sharp, angry breath. “So you think I’m making this up?”

Silence. He’s so close to saying it – to saying the one thing she wouldn’t bear to hear, the word that would probably destroy their relationship for good – and yet, imagine what it would preserve.

“No,” says Jim at last. “No, sweetheart. I don’t think you’re making it up. I wish I did, but I don’t.”

It’s not the first time. It’s not even the first time for the family. David slid a butter dish across the breakfast table the other day just by looking at it. Half asleep and hungry, he barely realised what he’d done, but Lilian saw: Lilian, who told him quietly that she’d arrested a bloke the other week by jumping a gap between two rooftops that she should never have been able to jump, not without dying.

And Jim himself, who made a scalpel appear out of thin air the other week when he needed it to save a woman’s life and then watched it disappear afterwards, blood and all, when its task was done.

At the football pitch, over the other side of Dublin, Joanie makes a sound that’s almost a sob, and Jim knows it’s time to get the hell out of the hospital and drag his baby daughter out of whatever classes she’s about to get stuck in.

“Daddy, what’s happening to me?”

 _I don’t know, Joanie_ , he thinks and remembers green light and a voice saying _Jamie love your Hogwarts letter!_ as if that were some kind of explanation.

 

 **Tuesday**

Lilian wakes up screaming and locks herself into the upstairs bathroom to cry. She won’t tell him what she dreamt of; Jim tells the children she was dreaming about Harry, dead in his cot these last seventeen years, and they accept it. It’s not the first time they’ve seen her cry for him. They both know their Mum and Dad get quiet and sad at the end of July; they both know there’s a reason their parents don’t like to celebrate Halloween.

Joanie thinks her Dad doesn’t know, but even at twelve she talks to her big brother in the dead of night, as if he’s ‘up there’ listening, waiting to help with her every problem.

But today is different, and once Jim’s driven Dave and Joan to school, once he’s begged off work and called in sick for Lilian, he pounds on the bathroom door and gets her to open up.

She’s dishevelled, red-eyed, wild-haired. Her hands are shaking. When he sits down beside her on the cool tiles, he sees strange scars running across her shoulders, her back: like whip-weals burned into her skin.

They weren’t there last night.

“You weren’t lying,” she whispers.

Jim turns his head. His knee’s aching and he can’t understand it; never before has he had a problem with his bloody knees.

“I dreamt of Harry.”

He waits.

“I dreamt his first birthday. Oh, James, it was – it was so real, every minute –“

Lilian slides sideways and rests in his lap, sobbing softly again. “You were there, we were in the house in Scotland, Sirius had sent him this toy that almost killed the cat...”

Never in all the days of their acquaintance, let alone relationship, has she called him _James_ before. Nor does he – should he – know who Sirius is.

Yet there’s a face in his mind’s eye, familiar to him as his wife’s, his childrens’, handsome and laughing, dark-haired, arrogant, mischievous, clever and brave.

 _Padfoot_.

 

 **Wednesday**

Dave sneaks up to the attic and sits on the Forbidden Trunk for half the afternoon. He’s got no school, but he does have homework, and Jim simply cannot make him budge.

“I don’t care, he says wildly. _Wildly_ , imagine, his cheerful Davey being wild! “There’s something in this trunk, Dad!”

“Yes,” says Jim, “my parents’ things, now get your scrawny arse off it and come downstairs to do your homework!”

Davey crosses his arms over his chest and shakes his head. Short of physical violence, there’s nothing Jim can do.

That evening at dinner, Joanie points a finger at her plate and makes it hover off the table-top. Her little hand starts shaking with the effort of concentration it’s taking her for a minute before Lily walks over to her and takes her hand in hers.

Together, they levitate every damn dish in the house and two chairs besides.

 

 **Thursday**

“Petunia,” says Lily.

“You what?” James asks quietly.

His wife looks at him. “My sister’s name,” she says. “It’s Petunia. We wreaked absolute havoc at her wedding – turned all the tablecloths green – made the flowers wilt every time the Vermin walked past. Didn’t stop until we were right outside the church, my Dad was furious, said she didn’t deserve it. You asked what the hell she did deserve for spending the past seven years making her sister feel like she wasn’t fit to live. And then we left and got drunk with Sirius in the Broomsticks and he poured us onto his sofa that night and made us hangover bacon and eggs the next morning. That was the day my Dad decided he liked you, by the way. He told me later.”

James tucks his hands into his pockets. Joan has put her book down, brown eyes wide. Davey is watching his parents with bated breath.

“Evans,” he says, and the name rolls off his tongue like an outfit he has forgotten he still owned, a favourite dance move unused in decades: stiff, but everything still the perfect way he remembers it. “Last week, you didn’t have a sister.”

She crosses her arms over her chest. “I know that, Prongs.”

 

 **Friday**

They take the Forbidden Trunk down from the attic.

“You don’t know what’s in it, do you Dad?” asks Joanie shrewdly.

James pauses, hand on the dusty lock. “I thought I did,” he says quietly. “I truly, honestly, thought I did, Joanie.”

The lid opens after a judicious application of crowbar, cracking and groaning on its way up. Its sole contents appear to consist of a red-gold banner lying in the bottom, a lion rampant. Lily touches it and says, “Where dwell the brave at heart.”

Dave tugs it out and topples over when it comes loose all at once, falling in a heap into his lap. “Where’s that, Mum?”

James and Lily look at each other. “Gryffindor,” they chorus.

“Hell of a Forbidden Trunk – a mangy old flag with a lion on it,” says Joanie. “Hang on – what’s that?”

A box in a corner, flat and long, and the contents rattle when Joan dives for it and picks it up. She pries the lid off, grinning, and Dave leans over to see, and both of them stare.

“It’s just –“

“It’s sticks, Mum!”

Lily takes the box out of their hands and shows it to James. His fingers shake as he reaches out: Mahogany, eleven inches, pliable...

“Excellent,” he says, and has to clear his throat, “for Transfiguration.”

Just like that, it’s there, waiting with the tingle in his fingers and the warmth in his palm, reunited with his wand: he’s James Edward Potter, he’s a pureblood wizard, he’s Lily Evans’ husband, he’s a member of the Order of the Phoenix, he’s a _Marauder_ –

He is Harry James Potter’s father, and he remembers that first birthday, and the months after it, and the door bursting open and Him and the green light –

Lily lifts her own wand out of the boy and brings it down in a sweep: red sparks pour out of the tip and dance into the middle of the room, forming a red Gryffindor lion that roars and knocks a chair over, runs a circle around Joanie and David, both of them open-mouthed with wonder, before exploding with a gleeful shout over the kitchen table ten feet away and scorching the wood.

James realises they’re both on their feet. It’s as if he hasn’t looked at her in sixteen years – or if he’s looked, he hasn’t seen. Red hair and green eyes just as he remembers, faintest of wrinkles and smile lines. Detective Lilian Potter – he wants to laugh, to fling his hands up and dance in the rain, to run in the night as a stag and know that the world is his for the taking once more.

Lily’s smiling at him, and he knows she’s feeling the same way.

“Sixteen years without a memory and not so much as the ability to charm the kettle into boiling,” she says. “I knew I should have gone for the giant squid.”

“You married me and you’ll lump it, Evans,” he says, grinning, and then they’re kissing, and it’s like coming home: finally, perfectly complete.

“Guys,” says Davey at last, “you’re not making any sense. I mean you’re being gross with the kissing just now, but mostly you’re just not making sense.”

Joanie stands up; her hair’s a mess, just like her father’s, and her hands are clenching, but her voice is amazingly steady. “Is it. Is this – was that lion magic? Can you do magic? Can –“

Ah, the crux of it, Joanie-love, the all-important question, to which you will receive the answer that will give you your heart’s desire: this I promise you.

“Can I?”

James has an arm around Lily’s waist; her hair is falling over her shoulders and her smile is wide and bright and glorious. “Yes,” he says.

 

 **Saturday**

“Don’t worry, Davey, you have to be seventeen before you take the Apparition test.”

“Good,” says Davey, rather green, “because I don’t ever want to do it again!”

“Then don’t,” laughs Lily, “it’s not compulsory, love.”

“So your sister Petunia,” says Joan.

“Is vile,” says Lily cheerfully. “And she married an even viler husband – James and I used to call him the Vermin.”

“But you think she can _help_ us? Getting in touch with this Dumbledore bloke?”

“Well –“

“To be honest with you, love, we’re a bit desperate,” says James calmly. “None of our friends live where they used to, and I don’t think marching up to Hogwarts school and knocking on the front door is a very good idea. We’ve no clue what’s going on in the wizarding world. We need _something_ , even if it’s just a place to stay for a couple hours while we get our bearings and a hint.”

Unspoken goes the fact that Lily wants to see her sister, vile as she is: that she never quite stopped loving Petunia, despite everything.

“About this evil Lord person who did this to you – to us,” says Davey.

Little Whinging is as boring as James remembers from his one visit; same houses, same streets, same colourless people. It’s a grey day, threatening summer drizzle, and the playground is as deserted as the streets.

“We think,” says James, “it must have been him.”

“And he – he killed Harry,” says Joanie in a rush. She bites her lip and watches the way her parents grasp each other’s hands; but grief is grief, whether you think your child died by cot death or Killing Curse, and Harry has long been little more than a beloved memory.

“Yes,” says Lily hoarsely. “He must have.”

“Will he want to kill us?” Davey whispers.

“I shouldn’t think so,” says James. “Neither of you were born at the end of July.”

“The Prophecy was specific about that, darlings,” says Lily, and only James can see how much the words cost her.

Magnolia Crescent. Privet Drive.

Outside Number Four, the Vermin is recognisable from – well, space, to be perfectly honest with you, having not so much grown as exploded sideways in the space of seventeen years, though his hair is greyer now and his clothes, if that were possible, are more boring than ever. He’s struggling to load the car with a pile of suitcases: there’s even a trailer on it, and a roof rack carrying four rather hideous chairs, and as he grabs another case and gives it a yank, meaning to swing it dramatically into the boot of the car, it lifts off the ground and knocks him off his feet, plainly far heavier than he looks: he collapses onto the tarmac with a roar of pain and a profusion of curse words.

From the garden wall, a teenage boy bursts out laughing: he’s sitting on it cross-legged like Peter Pan on Wendy’s chest of drawers, and he’s wearing jeans and trainers but there’s a wand sticking out of the back pocket of said jeans, and his hair’s a jet-black mess and sticks up at the back just like James’ own and Joanie’s and David’s does and the hands he flings out behind him to steady himself as he rocks with laughter are scarred and deft-looking, and when he turns his head James can see the light catch on his glasses.

“Vernon, Vernon!” Petunia bursts out of the house with a cry and shuffles anxiously over to him – the skirt prevents her from going very fast – clutches at his arm and tries unsuccessfully to haul him up by it, and the boy on the wall laughs even harder as she spins to look at him: “You – you –“

“Oh, sod off,” he tells her, gasping through his laughter, “Dudley’s packed his dumb bells...” and dissolves into a fresh gale, flinging his head back in sheer glee. “Merlin, I should’ve dug up a camera...”

And there is only one person in all the world whom that boy could possibly be.

“Harry?” whispers Lily, pale as death.

 

 **Sunday**

“And you can really fly on this?” says Dave breathlessly.

“Yes, but don’t,” says Harry firmly, “it’s an international-standard racing broom and not the sort of thing you want to practice flying on, it responds too well.”

“What’s that mean?” Joanie asks from her perch on the kitchen counter.

“Well, brooms usually respond to really slight movements and directions,” says Harry. “It takes getting used to, if you’re flying one that’s too responsive the first time you get on you could end up going a lot higher and a lot further than you meant to.”

“I’d _love_ to fly,” says Joanie decisively. “Will you teach me?”

“Course he will,” says James, coming into the kitchen. “I’m given to understand that’s what older brothers do.” He grins at his eldest son, who grins back: a brilliant, delighted smile that transforms his too-thin face like a burst of sunlight into a dimly lit room.

“Yeah,” he says, “I’ll teach you, Joanie.”

She smiles back.

“And that is it,” says Lily, coming back into the house, “last fag _ever_. Hit me if I slip, Prongs.”

“Hex you, possibly,” says James, catching the counter top and hauling himself atop it to sit beside David, who’s still admiring Harry’s Firebolt.

Lily grins her widest, utterly delighted.

“And I don’t suppose there’s much point asking if we’ve got any money left after that,” she says, nodding at the Firebolt.

“It was a Christmas present from Sirius,” says Harry quietly.

James can’t help it: despite the grief that’s twisted his stomach since yesterday, since Harry said, _Dad, Sirius is dead, he died last year and it was my fault_ , since he sat for that awful half-hour cradling his son in his arms while they both cried for Padfoot, he throws his head back and laughs. “Merlin’s pants, did he get you _nothing_ _but_ broomsticks?”

Harry’s about to ask, puzzled, when the doorbell rings – an instant later, the front door is shoved open.

“Harry!” someone shouts.

“Ron, in here – Hermione!”

Harry jumps out of the kitchen; there’s a whoop and a thump as if a pair of seventeen-year-old boys have just collided in an embrace at full speed, and then a girl’s voice, laughing: “Happy Birthday, Harry!”

“Yeah, happy birthday, mate – the Muggles get off all right? You look like death warmed over, by the way.”

“Oh, Ron, _really_?”

Harry’s laughing, delighted. Ron and Hermione, he’s spent two days now talking about them, and James can see Joanie sit up straight and frantically try to flatten her hair; see Dave gulp and throw his shoulders back, and realises: they want their big brother’s best friends to like them, want it more than anything.

“Course I’m all right,” says Harry, “come in through to the kitchen, there’s someone you absolutely _have_ to meet.”

They clatter through the door: a red-haired boy taller than Harry, who’s not short, a girl with bushy curls and a surprised smile.

“Guys,” says Harry, one arm around each of them, and by the way he’s blinking hard he’s trying not to cry, “that’s my Mum and Dad.”


End file.
